A tool is used to selectively create a tangible item or good having a desired shape, size, and/or having certain other desired attributes and properties. One tool creation strategy requires the use of a “block” of steel or another type of relatively hard material which is selectively “worked” or formed into a desired tool. While this approach does allow a tool to be selectively created, it is relatively time consuming, inefficient, and costly.
In order to address the drawbacks associated with the foregoing tool creation strategy, a laminated tool creation strategy is frequently used and requires the selective creation of various sectional members of “sections” which are made to cooperatively form the desired tool. One non-limiting example of such a lamination strategy is found within U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,483 (“the '483 patent”) which issued on Jun. 16, 1991 and which is fully and completely incorporated herein by reference, word for word and paragraph for paragraph. While this lamination strategy does allow a tool to be quickly and efficiently created, it has many drawbacks such as machining the tool after the tool is assembled. By way of example and without limitation, typical and desired types of tool steels (which are commonly used to create tooling) may usually not be available to be used in an overall lamination process, due to certain inherent features or properties that prevent such steels from being efficiently cut into sections or selectively bonded or attached to other formed sections. Therefore, in many cases, alternative and undesirable or “inferior” materials must be used for laminate tool construction, thereby causing the produced tool to have undesired properties and characteristics.
While, in many instances, these alternative materials may perform satisfactorily throughout the life of the prototype or production tool, in many other instances, there may be a need for a more robust, hardened tool steel surface or a highly polished class “A” type of “working” surface which is not provided by these alternate materials. Thus, in these cases, the tool created by use of this lamination strategy does not generally have the required working surface and does not perform in a satisfactory or desired manner.
Further, the use of a lamination process may itself actually prevent the creation of such a highly polished class “A” working surface, since such a working surface is cooperatively formed by the selective coupling of each of the individual sections and, in many cases, by a bonding material which respectively resides between each adjacently coupled pair of attached sectional members and which forms part of the working surface. Particularly, the absence of homogeneous material, such as a tool forming type steel, having desired and homogeneous properties, with which to form such a working surface, actually prevents the formed working surface from being formed in the desired manner and prevents the formed working surface from producing a tool having the desired characteristics.
Further, a prototype tool is often initially built in order to ensure or verify that the designed tool does, in fact, produce an item having a desired size, shape or other configuration, to create design specifications which are used to produce the final “production tool”, and to ascertain the need to modify the initial design before the time and expense of creating a final production tool is realized. Using this approach a minimum of two tools are typically required (i.e., a first or “prototype” tool and a second or “production” tool) having a desired design and configuration. The use of this first prototype tool undesirably increases overall manufacturing/production cost and the needed or required time to produce a final desired product.
The present invention overcomes some or all of the previously delineated drawbacks of tool design and creation and, by way of example and without limitation, allows for the creation of a laminated tool which has a relatively long working life and a desirably finished working surface, and which obviates the need to initially create and use a prototype tool as part of an overall process to create a “finished” or “production” tool, thereby reducing production cost and decreasing the time needed to design and produce a desired product.